


Unsettled Debts (Of The Next Generation)

by nadiavandyne



Series: h/c bingo 2018 [2]
Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: Community: hc_bingo, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, also black mask kicks it, and general oh god why is it so sad from tim cass and dick, check the warnings in the AN, damian's childhood, jason's post resurrection-hood, stephanie's childhood, with some bruce wayne father figure to make up for the pain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-13
Updated: 2018-11-13
Packaged: 2019-08-23 04:08:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16611647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nadiavandyne/pseuds/nadiavandyne
Summary: Six moments detailing the aftermath of how they got here.





	Unsettled Debts (Of The Next Generation)

1\. **Discussion**

Grayson says they need to talk, and Damian Wayne does not flinch.

He wants to flinch, but he’s _Robin_ and he’s a _Wayne_ and an _al Ghul_. Robins and Waynes and al Ghuls do not flinch. 

Last night on patrol he had… fallen asleep. And when he was asleep, he had dreamt of some of his time with Mother. Then he had woken up with a yell, blowing their stake-out, and causing Grayson to get grazed by a bullet protecting him. 

He’s been avoiding Grayson since, but Grayson is Batman and he is Robin, so he cannot avoid him forever. 

Damian pushes away the sick feeling in his gut, the memory of talking with Mother, and nods. “Yes.” He says, his voice perfectly even. “I’ll be in the cave.”

He leaves, and he’s _not_ running away. He’s _not_.

2\. **Cars**

Brucie Wayne’s line of cars is so over-the-top, stupid _ridiculous,_ that he should be laughing. 

When Dick looks at them, it’s almost impossible to control his knee-jerk reaction. He tenses, and the Bat-level of normal _on edge_ skyrockets. It’s the kind of response he usually has when a t.v. glitches in the way that hints at hijacked broadcast and an imminent threat.

 _It_ happened months ago, but he can’t look at the cars without seeing Damian’s almost permanently still body among them. The cars aren’t even the same cars. They have near-death experience frequently. It’s nothing special. 

Damian _al Ghul_ being attacked in the manor itself, however, _was_ a special incident. And the cars are different, but the room is the same.

He stays out of the garage for that reason. He plays it off as _Dick Grayson just finds cars boring, ha ha_. 

But he can’t join in when Stephanie teases _rich guy Wayne_ about them.

 _It_ was months ago, but the fear still scrapes at his chest.

3\. **Cherries**

The bowl of cherries is unassuming. They look… appetizing. Appetizing, adjective, stimulating one's appetite. Appetizing, a word that feels almost slippery on Cass’s tongue, but spicey too, like the noodles on 16th street.

There was an… incident, earlier. Jason had done something, pissing Tim off, and Tim had responded with a surprisingly juvenile prank, considering that it was Tim, but tensions were just high enough that when Jason brought up his death as an excuse for something… something she can’t even _remember_ now, Cass snapped.

She didn’t _mean_ to whirl around and yell at him. There had just been a flash of green, of something angry and jagged and hurt in her mind, and _he wasn’t the only one who had died_ \--

She’s in one of Tim’s unused safehouses now. It’s one of his old ones, from when he was Robin. The last place anyone would think to look for her. 

The bowl of cherries is definitely a trap. For _who_ , Cass doesn’t know, but if they were actual cherries, they’d be rotting on the table. The safehouse is _that_ unused.

And ugh. Rot. Ew. Gross in food, and harmful in materials. Especially buildings. She’s fallen through rot too many times to count.

The cherries look... weird. There are no blemishes on them. There is no rot. They are unreal. They are perfect.

Cass was supposed to be perfect. Is she weird and unreal like the cherries?

Or was her losing her temper earlier a blemish? How do you measure blemishes in human beings?

What about rot?

Cass sits down, and she pulls out her phone. Maybe it’s something she can google.

4\. **Macabre**

He’s missing parts of that night. 

And not _small_ parts either.

Tim remembers arriving in Iraq. He remembers Pru, Z, and Owens hijacking his trip. He remembers the car ride to the cave.

He remembers the stifling heat, how the car’s ac didn’t exist. He remembers Pru talking, too loud and too close to his ear. Owens was next to her, his voice horribly off-tune as he sung along to songs that weren’t playing on the radio. Z was silent for most of the trip, occasionally cutting in with a perfectly timed insult. 

He knows, logically, that they then got out of the car. He remembers lighting a flare, and heading down into the caves. 

He remembers a feeling of almost peace, of near satisfaction. The closest he could get to those feelings when Bruce was dead. He can create an image of the cave wall in his mind.

But he doesn’t actually remember the cave. The bat carved into the wall that shaped the next year alludes his mind. 

He doesn’t remember exiting the cave, and he remembers flashes of the Widower’s attack--

He remembers waking up in the desert, seeing _blood_ and _blood_ and--

He wakes up. He’s told that Z and Owens are dead. He can’t remember what actually happened. When he wakes, he’s beside the pit, but Ra’s says he didn’t die, so it’s fine. 

It’s fine. 

5\. **Quarter**

Stephanie flips the quarter through her fingers, focusing on the small bit of metal instead of Batman’s lecture.

She’s not even _Robin_. She doesn’t work for him. Batman doesn’t want Spoiler out on the streets. What right does he have to lecture her?

To be fair, he’s currently lecturing Batgirl and Robin, but she can feel the disappointment in the air, and knows it’s aimed at her.

She feels like a child again. Her father “explaining” his reasoning for locking her in the closet, telling her that if she was just a bit better he wouldn’t have to punish her. Young Stephanie, a blanket pulled to her shoulders like a cape, knees tucked to her chest, playing with the spare change that dropped from the pockets of the jackets in the closet. 

It’s a completely different situation. Stephanie still feels guilty, like she fucked up-- like _she’s_ fucked up. And Batman isn’t even _talking_ to her.

Then she feels more guilty for feeling guilty. She’s seen Batman bust kneecaps for pulling the kind of shit her father used to pull with her. These are _completely different situations_ , it’s stupid to be reacting like this. 

The Spoiler focuses on the quarter, on controlling her breathing, and not on the thoughts swirling around her head.

6\. **Even**

Jason kills Black Mask on a Tuesday.

He’s not sure what day the Girl Wonder died on. He knows his death date was fudged, so it only makes sense for Stephanie Brown’s to be wrong as well. 

He’s got this whole plan for revenge. The _Red Hood_. Already, his contacts are setting up around Gotham. In just a few days, he’s going to start to put an end to this madness. He’ll control the flow of crime, and there won’t be anymore fudged death dates, no more ghosts of children haunting the streets.

Jason knows, after thinking it, that that’s impossible. It’s Gotham. There are always dead children in Gotham. 

He goes to a bar, and they don’t card him, and that doesn’t matter because he has a fake id, and he buys a drink. Jason stares down at it, and he’s really not in the mood to be drunk. 

How old was Brown? Fifteen? Sixteen? She couldn’t of been much older. There's a photo on her grave. It’s of Brown and two others who must be her friends, a girl with short cropped black hair on the left, and a boy with black hair whose face was hidden behind a huge red scarf. Stephanie was in the middle, her arms around her friend’s shoulders, grinning at the camera. Frozen in time.

Now she’s dead. Like Jason should be. In the end, was she scared?

He was--

Being drunk suddenly sounds like a very good idea. 

Jason sends out a silent request to whoever's listening, whoever or whatever controls this bullshit. _Don’t force her back. Don’t do what you did to me._

He closes his eyes, and takes a sip of his drink. Then he finishes it.

Black Mask should’ve suffered more. But he’s dead, and Jason killed him, and you can’t settle debts with the dead.

7\. **Last**

They held the line.

The relief efforts are going to be enormous, and without a doubt expensive, but they held the line.

Stephanie is unconscious, but Bruce made sure her injuries were taken care of on the Watchtower, and she should wake up soon, sore but alive. Jason and Damian are bickering, and their injuries were somehow relatively minor. The two don’t seem to be in a destructive mood, so he’s not particularly worried about what they’re arguing about now. Cassie sits next to Stephanie’s bed, looking at something on a tablet, and he needs to make sure she isn’t hiding any injuries from him, but Tim’s asleep on her shoulder, still half in his gear, and he’s reluctant to make either of them move.

“They did good.” Dick doesn’t startle him, but only barely. “Has anything new developed?”

Bruce shakes his head, and turns to look at his son. Dick’s arm is in a sling, and his face is battered, but he’s got the ghost of a smile on his face, staring at his siblings. He also looks dead on his feet. “Go to bed, Dick.”

“You go to bed.” Dick shoots back automatically, then backtracks. “Wait. It’s seven am. Why are you telling me to--”

“Tim’s gotten more sleep than you, and Tim gets his sleep via unfortunate napping on rooftops that’s caused by punching and is actually unconsciousness.” Bruce says bluntly. “Cass has had more sleep than you, and she’s still on Hong Kong time, meaning her only sleep is when she blinks. We won. Go to bed.”

“It’s seven am.” Dick repeats. “Seven. In the morning.”

“And the fact that you are still functioning defies medical science. The world is saved. Your sleep schedule is not.” Dick opens his mouth to argue, and Bruce cuts him off. “Jason and Damian are bickering, knowing their track record, it’s probably going to evolve to a physical fight soon.” Bruce lies, and he lets the _do you want to handle it_ go unspoken.

“I’m going to tell everyone that the Batman is mean to children.” Dick says, relenting. 

“You’re 26, now scram so I can stop your brothers from destroying _another_ computer.”

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for pretty heavily implied past child abuse for both Damian and Stephanie, the past canonical deaths of three teenagers, some pretty heavy identity issues from Cass, past near death experiences of a kid, and a fuck ton of repression from Tim. Also Black Mask kicks it. 
> 
> hey remember those times Cass died? and when she was resurrected by a Lazarus pit? yeah that was fucked. huh. i'm considering writing something about that


End file.
